The power of today's generation

As a follow up on my previous post on our generation (26.10.11) many coincidences occurred last week as if someone wanted to reassure me and show all the positives about today's world construction and its young generation. What happened had such a big impact on me that I have decided to dedicate more time for its research an write about it as part of my university project. 'Occupy' movement that is. These young boys and girls who went out on the streets on New York first, and then the movement spreading all across the globe makes me rethink about my previous rather spontaneous generalisations about 'hopeless' youth. I do not deny that we all build our assumptions and see the world based on personal experiences and occurrences but when surrounded by an uninspiring crowd it drags one down into pessimistic perspective. But to become overly pessimistic and sad is not a solution here and will not benefit anyone - we have to hold on and try see the best in this world. One has to be rather strong in order not to let the evil' win: ''For evil to flourish, all that is needed is for good people to do nothing'' (E.Burke).

For my future research I will be looking at some striking images and photography of 'Occupy" events and see how it affected media, people's perception of the problems and  most importantly, how it influenced the governmental actions. Will it influence future policies, will it influence the future of our societies? We all know that there is no perfect society, but we as the western humanity will always be reaching for perfection.

Here I would also like to highlight a theory that will probably be the basis of my project research. It reflects perfectly current 'Occupy' events and descibes its causes in a way. The theory of counter-productivity. From the book The Ecological Modernisation Reader (Mol, Sonnenfield, Spaargaren, 2009)

The theory of counter-productivity has many foundations and predecessors, and its central message is: stop growing, start shrinking. A scientific foundation for this was given by the 'thermo-dynamic school of economics' related to N.Georgescu-Roegen, with a transfer of the entropy paradigm from physics to society, which has become the eco-misers' most beloved reference. The idea is that whatever is done uses up energy and resources of a higher order, which unavoidably leads to increased entropy. Each unit of economic value added with each step in the human chain of production equals a step of ecological degradation and destruction of nature. The only conclusion can be : humanity must do away with the existing rationalist, materialist, and outer-wordily oriented pursuits of happiness. We would have to slow down, retire into more spiritual inner worlds, shrinking all the way.